"Is that a thing?" is a phrase that gets knocked around our house quite a bit lately. Be it an obscure news story, a moral panic or a hard-to-believe tale that somehow found its way into our email box, we find ourselves asking each other if, indeed, it is a thing.

In the previous millennium, wondering if something was a thing was more difficult to prove. These days, all one need do is Google it and in a matter of seconds you know for sure whether it is a thing or not a thing. For instance, the Mosquito Ring Tone is a thing.

Edging ever so close to being 50 has me convinced that by the time I discover something is a thing means it used to be a thing but no one considers it a thing anymore. As the kids say, "That is so five minutes ago." Yes, I know, kids don't say that anymore. The fact that I say it proves my point.

My wife and I were watching the first episode of a television lawyer show called "Made in Jersey" on CBS when the topic of the Mosquito Ring Tone came up as a plot point. A sound was made in the show that had a teenager covering her ears while the characters closer to middle age didn't react. The teenager explained that there is a ring tone that only young people can hear. I turned to my wife, "Is that a thing?"

A few clicks later, we found out that not only is it a thing but you can go on YouTube and test it (www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrewnzQYrPI, or just Google it). I gathered the family around the computer and hit play. There is a test tone at 8 kilohertz we all could hear. Next was a 12-kilohertz tone and the proclamation that if you were younger than 50 years old, you should be able to hear it. So far so good. That was the last tone I heard. I couldn't hear 15-kilohertz, and I couldn't hear 17.4-kilohertz. Not at all. Zilch. Nada. Bupkis. My daughters, however, heard them all, including the 17.4-kilohertz sound that is the Mosquito Ring Tone. I felt like the parents in "The Polar Express" who couldn't hear the bell anymore. Man, I never wanted to become those parents.

It turns out, some genius high school students download the 17.4-kHz Mosquito Tone into their cellphones and use it to alert them to an incoming text, voice mail or phone call while their teacher is totally oblivious to it. Where was this technology when I was in school? The best we could do was pass a note from desk to desk with the knowledge that if we were caught, Sister Ursula would read the note to the entire class.

My daughters were unaware of the Mosquito Tone until I filled them in. I couldn't help but smile that I knew about something before they did and it wasn't "so five minutes ago."

"So it really is a thing?" my oldest daughter asked.

"Oh, it's a thing all right," I answered proudly. "It's just a thing I can't hear."